Critique: iPad take 2

This week I was back on the iPad. In fact, I am sitting in the Vox office finishing it up right now. I'm just going to give you a preview of the spread I like best from the issue. Next week I'll show the whole thing.




This week I was assigned to do departments, and these images are from the arts section. I ended up doing arts, scene, endnotes and the TOC.
I liked the secondary where I was able to play with text placement a little more than with some of the straight stories we publish. It was more fun from a design perspective. I also just really like the image from the splash page, mostly because I love coffee and she's holding a coffee mug.
I think that I could have found a better way to break up the two stories, although I am not upset with how it turned out. If I had some more space I would have tried to play with some other things, but I did not have that liberty. Maybe even just playing with the color of the line break would work. Maybe I'll run that by Dayne, I don't know.
I think this week went much better with the iPad. Since I knew what I was doing and what to expect I was able to plan my time better. I also had correct templates to use so I didn't spend 3 hours designing the wrong way. That was definitely a plus.
After doing both departments and features, I think that I prefer the features. There was a lot more liberty to play with design which I really enjoyed. I think when I go back to do the iPad again I'll ask to do the feature.

Response: History presentations

This week we each did a short presentation on a magazine before the '70s. I ended up with Vogue from 1910-1919.
This project was very interesting for me. I had never looked at such an old magazine, in fact I had no clue Vogue had been around for so long. The biggest thing I found was how they used illustration covers and hired different artists to do different covers. This is very similar to how a magazine would hire a photographer to do a specific cover shoot for them. It was also interesting to see how they did not have a "branded" logo yet. On many covers, the title of the magazine was drawn differently. In current times, magazines would never do that. They have a specific typeface that they use on each cover so that they have a recognizable identity. This was not the case for Vogue at the time, and it was not the case for many other magazines that my fellow designers studied. It goes to show that a magazine can be successful even if they do not want to keep one typeface for their name. As long as the title is legible, a reader will know what they are buying and still want to read the magazine. In fact, I would probably be more drawn to a cover with a clever, integrated title that showed a lot of thought went into how to write the title. But that could just be because I love typography and am a designer.
Anyways, here are some covers for you to check out:

You can't miss: should we edit photos

I was checking out Glamour's website the other day when I stumbled across an article about photo editing.It shows these before and after images and asks the readers what they think about the editing that has been done.


Since this will inevitably be part of some of our jobs, I wanted to see how you guys felt on the issue. I think some photo retouching is necessary, but these don't even look like the same people. I think this is a bit too much. What about you?

You Can't Miss: Typography videos

Well, originally I was planning on posting the Cats as Fonts, but Will beat me to it. I'm just glad someone showed it to y'all because when I saw it I practically died of laughter and then immediately thought of LeeAnn.
Anyways, instead I have these two Youtube videos that I had found a while back that play with typography. Incase you haven't noticed by now, I'm obsessed with typography. One is hooked up with audio from the movie "The Dark Knight" and the other is an I love NY typography deal. Both are really fun and show off some great typography skills. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Critique: Wilderness Feature

Let me begin by saying, sorry designers. I am writing this post from my apartment and due to getting a new computer I can't get my laptop to connect to mofiles right now, so I will not be able to upload photos of the feature until tomorrow. But I promise to get online and add them as soon as I have access to the server!

I really do like how this feature turned out. It looks much different than the original feature that Andrea and I created. We found better typefaces to use and a more "wilderness" style color palette. We also made it look less "girly" as the editors had described it. With the help of Timmy, we also came up with a better photo edit. The sidebars also work a lot better now.
The experience of working on the feature with another designer was great. Andrea and I worked very well together and were able to work fast and efficiently. We also had similar ideas on how to design, what photos to use and what typography and colors we liked, making it easy to collaborate. I'm really excited to see how the story turns out in print.

I have a lot of work coming up this next week. Once again I am back on the iPad app. I also have to bring in an updated Simplicity cover for Thursday. Not to mention working on the history project. Wish me luck! With iPad work around the corner I'll need it.

Response: Magazine Prototype Presentations

This week we presented our magazine prototypes to our publishing teams. I was extremely nervous. You remember the prototype I posted last week? Well, my laptop's logic board crashed on Wednesday evening and I had no laptop until Monday morning. This meant that I lost my entire prototype, and due to other obligations I could not start to remake it until Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, minus the cover, I liked everything about this new version better than the original. My publishing group changed their feature for the publication, causing my cover concept to change, and while I am not upset with the way it came out I do prefer the cover from last week a bit better. I had some trouble placing my sell lines on the new cover. Here is my new prototype:






I ended up choosing to use the canvas box on all of my pages. I made this decision based on feedback from my fellow designers. I realized that it would be a good way to brand the magazine. I also kept the same concept for the department page, although I tweaked it by finding a better image.
My main focus was making everything "user-friendly" so that someone could skim it for quick information or read it thoroughly if they chose to do so. That's why the feature had many pull out info sections along with space for real body copy. I also tried to keep things consistent with how I pulled out information in the department and the feature. I thought this would make it more efficient for a reader. Despite not being chosen as creative director for the project I am still very happy with the work I produced. I am going to tweak the cover and play with the sell lines a bit though. And after seeing Krista's work I am excited to work on the project.

I think the toughest thing for me was having to present this to the publishing group. It was tough to have to explain every single decision I made. While I just explained a few of my decisions on here, it's hard to think of everything as you're going and make sure you explain everything so that the publishers, some of whom have no design experience, can understand the concepts. For example, they wanted a bright color palette. This sounds great in theory, but bright to a designer can be a lot different than bright to a non-designer because we know that too bright will look cheesy. They were also worried about over-using photos, which I think are great to use.

All in all this was a great experience and has me a little bit less nervous for our final magazine presentations in May. Now it's just time to get to work!

Critique: iPad 02/09/12

Sorry in advance but these feature images are in reverse order, so please bare with me.
Last week I was in the first group of iPad app designers. The app is a weekly version of Vox that is transformed into a iPad application. I was in charge of the cover, TOC and afterlife feature package. Between creating the landscape and portrait versions of each of these I designed a total of 32 pages in 2 days. While we hit a few bumps in the process due to being the first group and some of the templates being wrong, it was a great experience. I really enjoyed the process and that you have a bit more freedom with designing. I have included my features in both landscape and portrait versions on here.
PORTRAIT:















LANDSCAPE















Overall I am pleased with the feature. It was nice because I was able to use the print version as a building block, for example I kept the splash page from print, but I was able to add my own touches. I used dotted lines with new story titles rather than the parenthesis that they used in print. I wish I had done a little bit more with the artwork. On a few pages all I had to use was a pull quote which wasn't ideal for my design. I wish I had time to create an illustration or find more photos.
I am pleased with my sidebars, however. I really like how the clouds turned out behind the text.
While I was extremely frustrated while working on the iPad, I really like the final product. I'm really excited to do my second issue in about two weeks.